By Apollo Buregyeya
When business and beauty take the stage, science is often pushed into the shadows. Kampala’s Nakivubo Channel is the latest victim of this tendency. Some want it covered, beautified, and packaged as an urban asset. But let us pause and ask: what does the science say? Nakivubo is not just a drainage trench. It is Kampala’s main sewer artery. Every rainstorm drags with it stormwater, raw sewage, and industrial effluent from upstream slums and factories. That filth ends up in the channel, then flows to the swamp, and eventually into Lake Victoria. Covering it to hide the stench is like putting makeup on an infected wound. The wound remains, the infection spreads, and the patient is left weaker.
For decades, Nakivubo swamp has quietly served as Kampala’s cheapest and most effective treatment plant. Papyrus zones filter out over 70 percent of nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus before the water reaches Gaba, where millions draw their drinking water. Oxygen mixing in the open channel reduces toxicity. Covering it strips away this natural treatment, creates hidden choke points for plastic waste, and multiplies the risk of flash floods. Ask Nairobi. Ask Lagos. Their experiments with enclosed drainage ended in flooded streets and public health disasters. Yet, there is also a valid frustration.
Today, Nakivubo is dirty, smelly, and dangerous for the thousands who live around it. Proponents argue that underground chambers, solid waste filters, and landscaped walkways will turn it into a modern urban corridor. They see business confidence, tourism appeal, and real estate growth. Even the President has given his blessing. But can a concrete lid really outperform a living ecosystem? Once you cover a channel, every blockage becomes invisible. Every malfunction hides underground. Every flood hits harder. Add weak governance, and what you get is not modernization but denial. The real choice is not between beauty and filth.
It is between superficial fixes and lasting solutions. Kampala should expand upstream sewage treatment, keep sections of the swamp open as natural filters, and integrate landscaping and walkways alongside, not on top of, the channel. Beautification must not erase biology. Covering Nakivubo is not development. It is denial. Kampala will either learn to grow with its natural lifelines or suffocate beneath its own concrete. The smart city is not the one that hides its wounds, but the one that heals them.
The writer is a lecturer at CEDAT, Makerere University.
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